


Jump

by 50artists



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Lesbian Character, F/F, POV Lesbian Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22850740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/50artists/pseuds/50artists
Summary: Courier Six liked to mix up chems in dirty tins and inject them into her own arm to try and give herself an edge in gunfights. She could hack computers and pick locks and win arm-wrestling competitions. She was quick-witted when she spoke, and sometimes Veronica felt left behind, confused and slow, just trailing in her wake.
Relationships: Female Courier/Veronica Santangelo
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	Jump

Veronica was always a bit out of time and place because she’d never known a sky or a sun or the wind, and she’d been brought up in tiny social groups where everyone knew everyone - not in the way wastelanders seemed to know each other, but the closeness that can only grow in a bunker, where you have just a few feet to call your own and even they’re shared. In the Brotherhood your  _ air  _ was shared, lung to lung, bloodstream to bloodstream. Everything was careful and measured and curated and picked over.

How was she supposed to live up on the surface? It was the realm of makeshift medicine and guns held together by glue and tape, and equally makeshift connections to the people around you. The air that blew over her arms and face had been shared with trees and oceans - and tiny little radioactive particles, don’t forget those.

It wasn’t like she had a choice.

Veronica watched as her skin, once deathly white and flawless, became weathered by the wasteland. She was prickly about her appearance. A remnant from her upbringing in the Brotherhood; back when everything she did was watched and criticised by dozens of eyes, and they’d tell her  _ you look like you’ve gained weight  _ or  _ is that a new mole _ ? Even now she kept her hair (thin, stringy, limp) tied back and hidden. She was careful never to show her legs (frequently criticised as too pudgy) or her arms (too muscular). Standards of beauty, like everything else, were different out in the wastelands. Men liked to call out at her - even a few women, which made Veronica uncomfortable on a gut level that would probably never truly be gone, yet another remnant from the Brotherhood - and when she visited bars she was never in short supply of drinks or company. Veronica could just never shake that ingrained knowledge that she was ugly. Maybe only by Brotherhood standards, but ugly all the same.

Veronica met a woman with no name and a blistering scar through her forehead. Hers was the sort of face that was unapologetic, not afraid of judgement or ugliness; above it all, somehow, and Veronica was drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

She was a bit like Christine, and maybe that was where the initial attraction came from. The woman was short and sturdy, and through the scraps of leather armour and metal strapped to her body, Veronica could see the way her muscles would shift under her taut skin. But the woman was also different to Christine - different to anyone that Veronica had ever met - in that she was wild and off-kilter but cuttingly sharp beneath it all, and when she smiled you thought,  _ oh no _ .

Veronica did not need much persuasion to leave the trading post she’d washed up at. The nameless woman only had to smile and Veronica was leaping at the chance to follow after her. Like a dog, she thought in her darker moments. Pathetic. 

The nameless woman had been shot through and survived, hence the white ridges splintering out from her head. “I was a courier,” she said, “a guy was after something I carried and decided to put a bullet through my brain. You can call me that, I guess.”

Veronica frowned. “Call you what?”

“Courier. I was Courier Six.”

Courier Six liked to mix up chems in dirty tins and inject them into her own arm to try and give herself an edge in gunfights. She could hack computers and pick locks and win arm-wrestling competitions. She was quick-witted when she spoke, and sometimes Veronica felt left behind, confused and slow, just trailing in her wake. But Veronica had an edge of her own: a hydraulic power fist that she’d souped up, that could punch through the shell of a radscorpion without Veronica having to break a sweat. In the evenings she would sit and polish the pistons and gears while Courier Six lounged around, and the desert blustered and croaked around them, and the sky was dark and full.

They travelled together for a long time. Sometimes they'd be in scrappy little towns and Veronica would earn them a few caps or a roof for the night by tinkering with the faulty electronics that seemed to litter the wasteland (everywhere you looked you found broken-down water purifiers and solar cells caked in grime and heat systems and water pumps and communication towers succumbing to age and rust) and Courier Six, depending on her mood, would either get into a petty argument and be kicked out, or else get drunk out of her mind and befriend everyone in whatever dinky little bar served the local alcoholics, or - on special occasions - offer a helping hand at no cost at all. They went down to the Brotherhood bunker and Veronica felt a silent fluttering of joy every time Courier Six proved herself to be smarter and stronger than all the people who had ever looked down on her. A balance fell between the two of them; Courier Six tampered down Veronica's out-of-touch Brotherhood edges, and Veronica was (she liked to think) a civilising influence in turn. Often, Courier Six would find someone to sleep with. That was fine. Veronica would return her grins and winks, and watch Courier Six waltz off strung around a man, and think  _ that's fair enough, it's not like you own her, Veronica. _ Occasionally Courier Six would pick a woman out. Those were the times that Veronica had to hide her tight-knucked jealousy behind a smile that was stretched too thin. To be so close and yet so far - it was torture in its own way, and on those nights Veronica liked to drink herself under, until the world was fuzzy and all she could feel was the heavy weight of steel clamped around her arm.

Courier Six always came back to Veronica to sleep, though. "You can't  _ literally _ sleep with people," she would say if questioned, "not unless you trust 'em not to stab you in the night," and Veronica would smile and nod and secretly hope that Courier Six wasn't speaking from experience.

They chased a ghost across the desert. They didn't know his name or his motives or his affiliation, just the pattern of his suit - and by some miracle that turned out to be enough. They got caught up in the politics and glamour of New Vegas. Veronica had never visited before; Vegas had never been anything other than just-visible light pollution over the night sky, a faint glowing smudge on the horizon. Actually living in the city was hectic. For a few weeks they hung out with the Kings, and then they toured the casinos, and then everything collapsed and was a mess and Veronica could still see the flickering screen of Victor and his cowboy face, white teeth buzzing, rolling towards them out of the desert. They went to Ceasar's Legion and it was a bloodbath. Veronica bit her tongue as Courier Six let Benny go free (another hookup to add to the pile of things-Veronica-is-totally-not-jealous-of) and blood dripped down onto the dusty ground from her fist.

In the end it all fell through. Courier Six bounced out unscathed, just like she always seemed to, and Veronica was swept along with her. As the dust settled they turned to travelling again.

By now it had been - well, Veronica didn't keep much track of time these days, but it'd been a while. Enough for her to notice the new fine lines that radiated out from her eyes when she smiled.  _ That'll be the sun _ , a not-Brotherhood ghost of a voice whispered in her head,  _ you stay out of that UV - and as for the radiation, it'll riddle you with tumours and then leave you for dead _ …

Veronica and Courier Six stopped at a lake in the middle of a baking-hot summer day, and Veronica told herself she wasn't scared as she stripped off her clothes and flung herself into the water, and she told herself she wasn't staring as Courier Six followed suit. Veronica's hair floated lazily in the water. It wasn't even that thin, she realised. She'd seen ghouls out in the wastelands with just a few strands clinging to their scalp. What's more, she'd seen those ghouls regarded as beauties in their own strange right. She'd seen people with missing limbs or mottled scars or faces half sunken from stray shotgun blasts, and she was beginning (at long last) to realise that perhaps she'd been wrong all this time, and she wasn't ugly, and no one else was either. Veronica watched as Courier Six stood up in the water and rivulets traced the pattern of her scar down her forehead and along her temples. The burn of her heart was familiar by this point, almost background.

Courier Six turned her head. Caught staring, Veronica grinned and swept her hands through the water - and then, like children (but not like Veronica as a child, of course, who never saw more than a glass of water at a time) they were splashing and shrieking at each other in delight, and then Courier Six grabbed her by her legs and dragged her underwater.

Down in the murky depths of the lake, once she got over the shock of cold and opened her eyes, Veronica was faced with the blurry image of Courier Six in front of her, still slightly below her in the water, the grip on her legs now gentle rather than severe. They stared at each other and a few bubbles escaped Veronica's lips as she smiled. Then they burst to the surface and Courier Six pulled her into a messy kiss. It was difficult to maintain as they were both treading water and Veronica's chest felt so simultaneously tight and empty that she could've exploded, and after a few seconds they broke apart and Courier Six drew in a gasp of air, her face red. When she grinned Veronica could see the  _ oh, no _ in her smile, that same one she'd identified when they first met, that hinted at wild possibilities, but now it filled her with warmth.

They swam back to the shore and put their clothes back on.

Not much changed afterwards. Courier Six was still bold and snappy and smart as a whip, and Veronica still took utmost pleasure in the function of her power fist. The spectre of the Brotherhood loomed over her long after she'd left for good. The wasteland was still harsh and Veronica's skin was still tan and increasingly lined. Courier Six's face was still covered in scars. They still complemented each other, fed off each others' strengths and weaknesses, fought and slept and ate and lived by each others' sides.

Some things did change; for example, Courier Six no longer had to search for her nighttime company, and Veronica slowly let go of her lagging feeling. She still wore her hood, but around Courier Six she didn't mind taking it off and letting her hair fall around her face.

Courier Six was as tamed as it was possible for such a woman to be - that is, barely tamed, just  _ barely _ kept back from the edge, and often not tamed at all and all the way over the edge.

Good thing Veronica was willing to jump too.

**Author's Note:**

> hope there's someone out there still interested in a video game that came out a decade ago!
> 
> my tumblr is [xenixat](http://xenixat.tumblr.com) :^)


End file.
